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On May 23, 2023, we commemorate the centennial of legendary Spanish pianist Alicia de Larrocha (1923–2009). Over the course of four decades, she was a frequent soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Orchestra Hall, the Ravinia Festival, in Carnegie Hall, and in Milwaukee. As a recitalist, she regularly appeared under the auspices of Allied Arts and Symphony Center Presents between 1967 and 2001.
De Larrocha’s auspicious CSO and Carnegie Hall debuts occurred on November 8, 1966, when she performed one of her signature works, Falla’s Nights in the Gardens of Spain under the baton of seventh music director Jean Martinon. “Miss de Larrocha is a marvel. Her playing has perfect finish, complete authority, and rhythmic suppleness,” wrote Harold C. Schonberg in the New York Times. “As a Spaniard, she brings special authority to the Falla work, that curious and attractive hybrid of Spanish feeling and French technique. . . . She is a wonderful pianist and more: she is an artist.”
“The diminutive pianist from Barcelona may be the youngest seventy-six-year-old virtuoso before the public,” according to John von Rhein in the Chicago Tribune, following de Larrocha’s July 10, 1999, appearance with the Orchestra at the Ravinia Festival. “Her splendidly even fingering, rounded tone, pearly legato runs, and springy rhythmic articulations made her an ideal interpreter for Mozart’s sunny Piano Concerto no. 19 in F, K. 459. Everything was in the best of taste, nothing was overdone or excessively manicured, making this perfect midsummer Mozart.”
A complete list of Alicia de Larrocha’s appearances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is below.
November 8, 1966, Carnegie Hall
FALLA Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Jean Martinon, conductor
November 26, 1966, Orchestra Hall
MONTSALVATGE Concerto breve
Irwin Hoffman, conductor
October 3 and 4, 1968, Orchestra Hall
SCHUMANN Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
István Kertész, conductor
August 11, 1973, Ravinia Festival
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat Major, K. 595
Lawrence Foster, conductor
April 29, 30, and May 1, 1976, Orchestra Hall
May 12, 1976, Carnegie Hall
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 27 in B-flat Major, K. 595
Sir Georg Solti, conductor
July 8, 1976, Ravinia Festival
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G Major
RAVEL Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major
James Levine, conductor
August 10, 1978, Ravinia Festival
CHOPIN Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor, Op. 21
James Conlon, conductor
December 13, 14, 15, and 16, 1978, Orchestra Hall
December 18, 1978, Uihlein Hall, Milwaukee
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503
Sir Georg Solti, conductor
July 10, 1981, Ravinia Festival
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G Major
James Levine, conductor
October 15, 16, 17, and 1981, Orchestra Hall
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Major, K. 482
FALLA Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Garcia Navarro, conductor
July 30, 1983, Ravinia Festival
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15
FALLA Nights in the Gardens of Spain
Jesús López-Cobos, conductor
August 10, 1985, Ravinia Festival
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Minor, Op. 37
Michael Tilson Thomas, conductor
December 5, 6, and 7, 1985, Orchestra Hall
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G Major
Erich Leinsdorf, conductor
July 12, 1986, Ravinia Festival
SCHUMANN Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
James Levine, conductor
July 16, 1988, Ravinia Festival
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-flat Major, K. 271 (Jeunehomme)
Dennis Russell Davies, conductor
August 10, 1989, Ravinia Festival
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 1 in C Major, Op. 15
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 2 B-flat Major, Op. 19
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 3, C Minor, Opus 37
Edo de Waart, conductor
August 12, 1989, Ravinia Festival
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 73 (Emperor)
Edo de Waart, conductor
October 12, 13, and 14, 1989, Orchestra Hall
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 21 in C Major, K. 467
FALLA Nights in the Gardens of Spain
David Zinman, conductor
July 28, 1990, Ravinia Festival
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 25 in C Major, K. 503
Gianluigi Gelmetti, conductor
August 2, 1991, Ravinia Festival
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor, K. 491
Marek Janowski, conductor
July 18, 1992, Ravinia Festival
SCHUMANN Piano Concerto in A Minor, Op. 54
James Conlon, conductor
July 17, 1994, Ravinia Festival
BEETHOVEN Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major, Op. 58
Semyon Bychkov, conductor
July 22, 1995, Ravinia Festival
RAVEL Piano Concerto in G Major
Riccardo Chailly, conductor
February 29, March 1, 2, 3, and 5, 1996, Orchestra Hall
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488
Daniele Gatti, conductor
August 2, 1996, Ravinia Festival
FALLA Nights in the Garden of Spain
Christoph Eschenbach, conductor
July 10, 1999, Ravinia Festival
MOZART Piano Concerto No. 19 in F Major, K. 459
Semyon Bychkov, conductor
This article also appears here.
If you’ve tuned into CSOtv recently, you may have noticed that in the December 1953 concert, Lois Schaefer is sitting in the first-chair position!
Hired by fifth music director Rafael Kubelík in 1951, Schaefer served the Orchestra as assistant principal flute until 1954. She was the third woman rostered in the flute section, following Caroline Solfronk Vacha (1943-1946) and Peggy Hardin (1945-1951).
Born in Yakima, Washington, on March 10, 1924, Schaefer attended the Interlochen Summer Arts Camp as a teenager, later studying at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Georges Laurent (principal flute of the Boston Symphony Orchestra), Frank Horsfall, and Sebastian Caratelli. She completed her bachelor’s of music in flute performance in 1946 and an artist diploma the following year.

During her time in Chicago, Schaefer also taught at Chicago Musical College. By 1956, she returned east and was hired as principal flute of the New York City Opera, where she would remain for ten seasons. During this time, she also performed and recorded with the NBC Opera Theatre Orchestra, the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra.
In 1965, Schaefer was hired by then–music director Erich Leinsdorf to the position of flute and principal piccolo for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, her “dream job.” During her twenty-five-year tenure, she also served as principal piccolo for the Boston Pops Orchestra. “In more than 2,000 Boston Pops performances of [John Philip Sousa‘s] ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever,’ a moment always arrived when Lois Schaefer was the star of the show,” wrote Bryan Marquard in the Boston Globe. “Though she was a master of the memorable piccolo solo that is the highlight of the song, she didn’t take her eyes off the musical score—not in her first concert, not in her 2,000th. She was determined to never make a mistake on her notoriously difficult instrument, which sometimes waits silently through portions of concerts, only to suddenly be highlighted for all ears to hear.”
Schaefer served on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music from 1965 until 1992. She also was a board member of the National Flute Association, receiving their second-ever lifetime achievement award in 1993.
According to her sister Winifred Mayes, a cellist with the BSO from 1954 until 1964, Schaefer was “very, very happy in Boston. . . . She loved the orchestra and the people in it. She always felt very secure and warm towards them, and they towards her. I think it was perfect for her.”
In her final season in Boston, Schaefer was soloist in Daniel Pinkham‘s Concerto Piccolo, written especially for her. Upon her retirement in 1990, Globe music critic Richard Dyer wrote, “For her twenty-five years as solo piccolo, Lois Schaefer has been the highest, brightest voice in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. . . . To hear her in a Rossini overture is like watching the sunlight dance on rippling water. She can also break your heart with a perfectly placed high pianissimo in a Mahler or Shostakovich slow movement.”
Lois Schaefer died at the home she shared with her sister in Sequim, Washington, on January 31, 2020, at the age of ninety-five. She was survived by her sister Winifred Mayes until her passing, also in Sequim, on December 15, 2020, at the age of one hundred and one.
Lois Schaefer performs as first-chair flute in a December 9, 1953, Hour of Music telecast, currently available on CSOtv. Guest conductor and former music director Désiré Defauw leads the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in Grétry’s Three Dances from Cephalus and Procris, a suite from Fauré’s Pelleas and Melisande, and Schumann’s Fourth Symphony.
Special thanks to Bridget Carr and the Boston Symphony Orchestra Archives.
Wishing Walfrid Kujala—a member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s flute and piccolo section from 1954 until 2001—a very happy ninety-fifth birthday!
A native of Warren, Ohio, Kujala grew up in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where he started flute lessons when he was in the seventh grade. (His father, a bassoonist, steered him to the flute in order to “save him” from the headaches of reed making.) While attending high school in Huntington, West Virginia, he studied with Parker Taylor, principal flute of the Huntington Symphony Orchestra, and played second flute with the ensemble from 1939 until 1942.
Kujala attended the Eastman School of Music, where he studied with Joseph Mariano, principal flute of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. His college career was interrupted by two and a half years of military service in the U.S. Army, serving in the 86th Infantry Division Band from 1943 until 1946. During his tour of duty in the Philippines, after the end of hostilities, Kujala was briefly a member of the Manila Symphony Orchestra. From Eastman, he received his bachelor of music degree in 1948 and a master’s degree in 1950, and he was a member of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra under Erich Leinsdorf from 1948 until 1954. Kujala also served on Eastman’s faculty from 1950 until 1954.
In 1954, sixth music director Fritz Reiner hired Kujala as assistant principal flute of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and in 1957, he became principal piccolo, serving in that capacity until 2001. He also performed as principal flute of the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra from 1955 until 1960.
As a soloist, Kujala has appeared under Reiner, Sir Georg Solti, Seiji Ozawa, Antonio Janigro, and Lawrence Foster. He also has soloed at the Stratford and Victoria Festivals in Canada, as well as recitals, chamber music concerts, and master classes across the United States.

Kujala, Gunther Schuller, and Sir Georg Solti following the world premiere performance of Schuller’s Flute Concerto on October 13, 1988 (Jim Steere photo)
Kujala joined the faculty at Northwestern University in 1962 and taught there for fifty years, retiring in 2012. In honor of his sixtieth birthday, his students and colleagues commissioned a flute concerto from Gunther Schuller, and Kujala was soloist in the world premiere with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Solti on October 13, 1988. On August 19, 1990, he was soloist in the U.S. premiere of Einojuhani Rautavaara’s Concerto for Flute under Kurt Redel, at the National Flute Association convention in Minneapolis. The Chicago Flute Club’s biennial international piccolo competition is named in his honor.
The author of the textbook The Flutist’s Progress, Kujala also regularly contributes articles and editorial to several publications, including The Instrumentalist, Flute Talk, Music Journal, and Woodwind World. He is a founding board member and founding secretary of the National Flute Association, where he also served as president, vice president, and board chairman. Kujala and his wife Sherry make their home in Evanston.
Happy, happy birthday!
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra family joins the music world in mourning the death of Karel Husa, the eminent Czech-born composer and conductor. He was 95.

Husa, Herseth, and Solti backstage following the world premiere of the Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra on February 11, 1988 (Jim Steere photo)
Husa was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1969 for his String Quartet no. 3, and he was awarded the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1993 for his Concerto for Cello and Orchestra.
The Orchestra first performed Husa’s Music for Prague 1968 under Sergiu Comissiona in April 1973 and again in December 1986 under Erich Leinsdorf.
To celebrate Adolph Herseth‘s fortieth season as principal trumpet, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra commissioned Husa to write the Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra. Under the baton of eighth music director Sir Georg Solti, Herseth was soloist in the world premiere at Orchestra Hall on February 11, 1988. The Orchestra also performed the work multiple times during the first tour to Australia later that same year (details of the tour are here and here).